Wife of Harvard professor issues apology after video of her harassing student, calling their keffiyeh a ‘terrorist scarf’ goes viral
Eve Gerber, the wife of Jason Furman, an economics professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and top economic adviser during the Obama administration, apologized this week after a video of her harassing a Harvard graduate student wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian scarf, was widely condemned.
It was the latest controversy over the Israel-Hamas war connected to the university in recent months, where tensions have run high after President Claudine Gay’s testimony at a Dec. 5 congressional hearing on campus antisemitism.
In the 26-second video, Gerber, who is listed as the United States editor for the website FiveBooks, is shown following an unidentified student on a neighborhood sidewalk while launching into an anti-Palestinian tirade.
When she realized she was being recorded, Gerber waved mockingly.
“Hi, camera!” she says in the video posted to X by the Sparrow Project, which refers to itself as a “grassroots public interest newswire” in its bio. “Thank you for walking through neighborhoods and making families feel unsafe with your terrorist scarf.”
The student, a young woman who asked to remain anonymous, shared the clip with the Sparrow Project. She said Gerber spotted her wearing a keffiyeh, a head scarf that has long represented Palestinian nationalism and more recently has become a symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, and got out of her car to follow her.
The student began filming the encounter.
After Gerber made the “terrorist” remark, the woman began to respond before sighing as if in disbelief.
“Palestinians felt pretty unsafe when Israelis occupied their country, you know,” she said to Gerber.
“I’m glad you’re so proud of the slaughtering of civilians,” Gerber shouted.
“I’m not,” the student said.
The brief video has since been viewed more than 19 million times.
The following afternoon, Gerber posted a short apology online.
She said the incident took place on Oct. 14 and claimed that it occurred after she “overheard chants I found disturbing at a rally near my home.”
“I spoke with a person on my block who I thought had come from that event. When the political argument escalated, I used indefensible words. I was wrong to confront someone based on their dress and to use divisive, accusatory language,” she said.
In the two months since her outburst, she said she has “tried to learn more and take reparative action” and will “continue to do so.”
“Hate and inhumanity in any form are abhorrent to me,” she said. “I deeply regret what I said and did.”
The video has circulated widely, catching the attention of lawmakers, students, and academics.
Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress, said this “type of harassment never gets reported, but it’s shameful and disgusting.”
“People in our country have a right to wear whatever scarfs they want to wear and people following them and making them uncomfortable is just wrong and discriminatory,” Omar said. “Palestinians exist and need us to fight for their liberation.”
Abdelhalim Abdelrahman, a Palestinian-American and graduate student at American University, said “Palestinians are being doxxed and fired for speaking out against Israeli occupation and the war on Gaza.”
“But Eve Gerber gets to walk around on her high horse and harass my people,” he posted on X. “What chants did you find so disturbing that you felt it necessary to accost and berate an innocent Palestinian woman?” Abdelrahman added later.
Representative Greg Landsman of Ohio said the past few months have been traumatic and difficult for many people, “especially Muslims and Jews.”
“We absolutely have to lean into our common humanity, not this,” he posted.
The student told the Sparrow Project that she “felt compelled” to share the video after the shooting of three college students of Palestinian descent — Hisham Awartani, Kinnan Abdalhamid, and Tahseen Ali Ahmad — in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend.
“She hopes that through sharing this incident, light can be shed on the harmful biases that lead to Islamophobia and the devaluing of Palestinian lives,” the Sparrow Project said.
The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard, reported that Furman privately apologized to the student, citing a text exchange between them that they had obtained.
Furman told the student that there is “absolutely no excuse” for his wife’s actions and said “no one should have to go through” that experience, the paper reported. “I’m sorry.”
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